Christmas Home Tour 2016

Welcome to my Christmas 2016 Home Tour. It is so much fun to decorate the house for this magical holiday. It’s also difficult for me to stop putting out Christmas decorations or rearranging what’s already out. Thank goodness for this blog and wanting to get this post out for forcing me to say “enough already.” My husband and I are also hosting our 2nd annual Ugly Christmas Sweater party at the end of the week so I have another good reason to wrap things up.

I’m starting in the “Keeping Room” because it’s my favorite part.

This year we added a slim Christmas tree to this room so that we could put all of our special collected ornaments in a tree in the room we spend most of our time.

This room has a more child-like Christmas feel and I think cute with the faux fur wolf stockings, the mini character ladder in the corner, the lit snowman, the advent pillow, the advent house, the Santa and reindeer pillow, and the reindeer/moose family by the tree (a dad, a mom, and a son of course). There are plenty of blankets in the little white crates to snuggle under and watch Christmas movies together.

We also added a small but real tree in the corner because you can never have too many Christmas trees I guess and because I already had the perfect little galvanized bucket for a tree this size. Our baby tree has baby presents to go with it. 🙂

Here a few close ups of the mantle because I am so pleased with how it turned out.

This perfect little sled was a TJ Maxx find early on in my shopping.

I so love the jar scene trend. This little log cabin is so cute, don’t you wish it were real size and you could celebrate Christmas there? I do!

FYI – I know there are various things people use for snow in these jars. I actually decided to use salt. It’s super cheap (mine were $0.68 a can) and it looks great and you can easily make little mounds out of it or dig your items into the salt to sort of make different levels in the jar. I actually end up combining my salt from all the different jars I have around the house into 1-2 jars for storing, but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to just say “heck with it” and throw it all away since it’s so cheap and maybe you don’t want to take up storage space.

Since our little CJ pup wasn’t with us when I bought the wolf stockings from Pottery Barn Kids, I had to order him the closest faux fur one I could find this year. Because his doesn’t exactly match though, I thought he needed a little fabric deer head embellishment so he doesn’t feel left out. (I know it’s silly, but yes, I think like that.) This adorable little deer came from Antique Farmhouse.

All in all, the mantle is perfect in it’s simplicity.

The breakfast table is decorated simply as well.

I definitely embellished the kitchen for Christmas more than I did for fall.

I like how some of the salt stuck to this jar and made it look like it was snowing on my little red house.

More jars…

Here’s another corner in the kitchen I just love how it turned out.

The adorable little creamware farm animals get a new home all the time. They are also from Antique Farmhouse.

In the dining room, I had a lot of fun putting together my first Christmas tablescape.

The lovely winter scene wine glasses were an early present from my mom. Thanks Mom!

And of course the bar cart got a little sprinkle of sparkle.

That’s some wine waiting to be chilled for the Ugly Christmas Sweater Party.

Had to add another snowy jar scene.

The family room is next.

This was our only tree until we added the slim one. Now this is MY tree to decorate and it will probably look different every year. I kept the ornamentation simple and big this year. I was inspired by the really large wooden deer head silhouettes I found at Michael’s and Home Goods. I added a few wooden “Merry” signs as well. I picked those up from the Target Playground/Dollar Spot area and sparkled them up with snowy looking glitter.

I also like how this mantle turned out. It too is pretty and simple, but I like how the red pops. Red is my favorite color, but I don’t necessarily like to decorate with it for the everyday, so at Christmas I got to let it in everywhere! Even when I think I could do a neutral Christmas, I know it will never happen, because I need red. 🙂

I made the pallet board with the ribbon star after seeing this pretty picture on Pinterest a couple of years ago. I originally thought I would paint or stain the pallet boards, but once I had it put together and sanded it, I liked it too much and also I was really into the snowy glitter after the “Merry” signs. A little sparkle never hurt and adds a little something to the otherwise natural vibe going on on this mantle.

As always, I’ve got throw pillows to get my red crush on and spread so more cozy Christmas vibes.

So it’s not the first time I’ve done my tour a little backwards. We are going to end in the entryway where there is a definite reindeer motif happening.

I believe there are 12 and I named them all for you. There’s Renault surveying the scene and looking dapper with his plaid scarf. His two smaller buddies are Remy and Ranier. Our gold friend, also sporting a scarf, is Rousseau, and his bronze friend is Rocco. The weathervane reindeer is Raleigh. He has a much smaller fellow sharing his stand whose name is Rance. The alert seated wooden fellow is Ranger and the berry collared reindeer is Rawlings. Last but not least are our two babies in the snow, Riley and Renee.